You may have heard that just a few weeks ago Prime Minister Tony Abbott signed off on the China Free Trade Agreement that will allow Chinese based companies to import their own labour.

Abbott's free trade agreement also removes the requirement for mandatory skills assessment for ten occupations including: Electrician (General), Electrician (Special Class), Automotive Electrician. ALL OTHER occupations will be reviewed within two years with the aim of reducing or eliminating the need for skills assessments.

The ETU is fighting to STOP THE CHINA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT by raising this as a public issue before two parliamentary committee's consider the issues. In order to come into effect these parliamentary committees must sign off on it.

Members will be aware that the AER final determination is due to handed down at the end of this month.

The ETU has had a number of meetings with your senior management & others in an attempt to reduce the potential impact on ETU members as previously described by ActewAGL CEO & management.

I met & made representations to the AER. I found that the AER representatives had little or no idea on what it takes to run an electricity network & were ignorant, of the difficulties that our members face in the provision of a safe & reliable electricity network.

The AER people that I discussed the AER’s draft report were young economists who seemed to have an agenda that was totally unrealistic.

The ETU has questioned your management trying to find out how they have calculated the number of job loss’s they have quoted (150 from networks & 50 from corporate). The management have been unable to provide any formula etc, which leads us to believe that the number quoted is no more than a best guess.

The ETU have been investigating & promoting ideas for non regulated work that would assist in minimising the number of job losses. We are currently involved in ongoing discussions, which we are unable to divulge at this stage. I have discussed this with your CEO who is supportive of our ideas & efforts.

We have also sought from your management information on what classifications they feel the management proposed reductions would come from. To date they have been silent on this.

The opinion of the ETU is that reductions in the skilled industrial workforce will impact significantly on the organisations ability to provide safe & reliable services to the ACT community. As Actew is bound by legislative requirements & technical rules, we believe that a reduction of field workers would potentially backfire on the management & board of ActewAGL.

ETU commissioned AER Submission

The ETU commissioned a significant report that formed an ETU submission to the AER in response to the AER draft decision. You can read the ETU's submission here.

Our opinion is that the AER don’t give a s#*t about the community of Canberra or the hard working & loyal workers who deliver the best service at the lowest residential tariff.

We will seek further meetings with your management following the AER final determination, so that we can attempt to minimise any negative impacts on ETU members jobs.

The ETU put out a notice to members in response to the AER's draft decision that you can read here.

Apprentices & the future

We have also raised that it is vitally important for ActewAGL to support the ongoing employment of apprentices & to provide permanent roles for those apprentices upon their graduation. To not employ new apprentices & to not employ them on graduation is lunacy as this will clearly lead to a skill shortage in the future which, as everyone knows. Will backfire hugely. If there are to be job reductions we are seeking for the organisation to have a “mix & match” process where an older worker could take a package based on keeping a job for a graduating apprentice.

Clearly there is a long way to go & we are unable to do much more until the final AER determination is handed down.

The ETU will do everything we can to save as many members jobs as possible.